Individual gaps
Services do not provide a common standard of
quality to all their patients. Findings suggest
that patients have different expectations for
health care provision33 and that different groups
of patients may consider some dimensions of
care more important than others, which in turn
influences their satisfaction. Therefore, it is
important to investigate whether different
groups of patients share the same expectations
of quality. Patient satisfaction studies have often
demonstrated different levels of satisfaction for
different groups of people. For example, some
studies have observed gender (i.e. women less
satisfied than men) or age differences (i.e. young
people less satisfied than older) in terms of satisfaction
with a health care provider.34,35 A
question that emerges is whether these differences
reflect different expectations or different
experiences of the hospital environment.
SERVQUAL gives the opportunity to answer
this question.